the possession of light
by soaring-smiles
Summary: He closes his eyes, feels the timelines twisting and shattering and tangling. The possibilities rise in front of him like a silver, knotted ocean. He could drown in what-ifs. (ten/rose, eleven/rose)


**Just a two part fic dreamt up while I was working on my AUs. A sprawlong , sad piece. Title taken from 'Scherezade' by Richard Siken.**

**Reviews are greatly appreciated!**

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><p><strong>part one<strong>

_A man takes his sadness and throws it away_

_but then he's still left with his hands._

_not language, but a map- richard siken_

* * *

><p>He is dreaming again.<p>

A house set into the reeds and sand surrounding the ocean, a grey and dull and uncompromising sky, the sea shattering itself against the shore. The wood is pale blue, weatherboard, the sting of salt on his mouth. He remembers, faded years ago, a month spent here. She had made a windchime out of the glass washed up on the beach, and it clashes and dances relentlessly, a jagged harmony to the caverns in his head.

He opens the door.

Rose stands in the hallway, her feet bare, hair loose and damp. She stares straight at him with lonely, wary eyes. The windchime howls, and the house shakes. Her arms are bare, her legs are thinner than he remembers, and there is a patch of blood blooming across the stark white of her nightgown.

"Please," he says. "Don't do this to me. Not again."

"You're the one who can't stop dreaming of me," she says. The blood has spread rapidly, pooling down her legs in graphic crimson streaks. "You've done this to yourself."

The hall is trembling and so is he- Rose is covered with blood, his hands are soaked in it as she begins to crumple to the floor. The windchime is shrieking, screaming, and everything seems to amplify madly, his hearts pound and make his head ache and the _sound_-

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and wakes up.

* * *

><p>What would you do, when it happens? And inevitably, it must- the last of her burnt-blonde hair and terrified eyes disappearing into the Void. You know it has to. You have spent the hours living it in your head, again and again, searching desperately for some gracious, gasping loophole.<p>

You did not find it.

So what then- the last echoes, your hand upon the wall, the breath she leaves behind. Somehow, you will feel the imprint of her body, somehow you can feel the ripple of air she passed through. There is an empty, gaping absence in you now, a loose thread, a phantom ache. Her voice lingers in the sharp emptiness.

Your mouth shapes her name into silent, grieving syllables, your fingertips are bruised, your chest begins to break. Inside yourself, all the strings binding you together begin to unravel and your body is light and shaking. You are blinded.

So what, then- what would you do? What _will_ you do?

Think. Choose. Remember the arch of her neck, the bright, awful trust she gave you, the subtle angles of her smile. Remember the searing guilt that lived inside of you before she was there, the wonder in her short, incandescent life. The jagged, painful way she looked at you as her fingers began to slip.

(but know that whatever happens, you have killed her anyway)

* * *

><p>"You look tired."<p>

Amy says it like she knows why, like she knows exactly what he has been dreaming of. For a moment, his gaze is lost in the flaming mass of her hair, swept over her pale shoulders carelessly. For a moment, it almost reminds him of-

Nothing. It reminds him of nothing.

He touches the monitor, drags a thumb down the screen. Not too long ago, he remembers, it was cracked, split in the middle. "Sleeping," he says. "It does things to you." For some reason, he misses the mystery of something to chase after. To distract him.

Sometimes, just sometimes, the vastness of the universe is overwhelming. He has the entirety of everything at his call, and can't decide whether it's too much, or not nearly enough.

"No, seriously," Amy says. Her eyes- honest, wide- assess the wrinkles in his shirt, the swollen skin of his mouth. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"I'm always alright," he says reflexively.

_he remembers the groaning maw of the black hole he left her under, the way it felt to fall, and fall, and fall, and for a moment, he thought he would never land-_

"If you're sure," Amy says, uncertainly. Her accent thickens, a pleasant burring undertone. He knows her well enough to see she's worried, and she knows him enough to see he's lying.

"Shouldn't Rory be around here somewhere?" he asks abruptly. He forgets, sometimes, about Rory.

"He's coming," she replies, nearly irritated. "Where are we going today?"

Barcelona, he wants to say. Instead, his fingers curl around the glass ball of the extrapolator. "Nowhere in particular."

"Sorry." Rory enters in a fluster- he's always in the midst of some kind of minuscule panic attack, some hovering air of uncertainty. "I kept opening the door to the same room."

"Really?" he murmurs, not paying attention, too busy formulating coordinates, imagining cities.

"Yeah. Some kind of old console room, I think. Like this, but sort of...not." Rory pauses. "I found these." His voice is careful and restrained.

The Doctor glances over, and his fingers tighten so strongly around the extrapolator that the glass buckles. It shatters abruptly, shards biting into the tendons of his palm. He hardly feels it. Amy makes a noise- surprise, concern, maybe.

"Oh," the Doctor says. "That. That's nothing."

Rory stares uneasily at the remains of the extrapolator, then at the pair of rusted silver earrings he's holding. "I...are you-"

"Yes." Casually, the Doctor plucks the hoops away from Rory, dropping the into his pocket. "Leftovers."

"Doctor," Amy says. "Your hand."

He studies the thin rivulets of blood trickling down his knuckles, the shards of shining glass embedded into his skin. "How clumsy of me," he murmurs. For a moment he's silent. "Perils of equipment, I suppose," he concludes. "How do you feel about Ancient Greece?"

He doesn't stop to hear their answer, only inputs the coordinates, ignoring the blood smeared across the console. Only now is it beginning to sting- a dull belligerent ache. The TARDIS groans and trembles.

"Doctor," Amy repeats, softer. "What's going on?"

He closes his eyes, feels the timelines twisting and shattering and tangling. The possibilities rise in front of him like a silver, knotted ocean. He could drown in what-ifs.

"I don't know," he says, and for once- for once- it is the truth.

* * *

><p>The Void is hell, or maybe it's the other way around. Which came first- pain, or emptiness? She doesn't know.<p>

It is dark, impossibly dark, a black, choking finality. She is losing herself- memories, her name, her soul. It slips like ashes from her fingers, the remnants of who she used to be. There is only this- the nothingness, this chasm of space.

I see you.

She searches desperately for something to cling to, some semblance of being. Who is she? She must have a name. There must be something she remembers, there must be a sound, a touch, a laugh. Anything to anchor herself to. She can't forget, she can't she can't she can't-

You are brave, child.

There is a ripple. A disturbance. How long has she been here? A second, a century? It doesn't matter, she couldn't tell the difference. The sensation broadens. She is sure something is here. She is not alone.

_Valiant_.

She remembers, she remembers; a beautiful broken man, a black hole, a pit, dark numbers scratched over pale skin. A name. Belial. Lucifer. Something like terror grips her.

Where does the Devil go, when he dies?

_But never brave enough._

And she understands, now. They never escaped, she never won. This is it, the battle, the bloodless victory. It always knew, it was always one step ahead.

_Clever girl._

A name. Hers. It pounds, it beats, it demands to be spoken.

_It was always this._

And there is nothing but complete and searing agony, a thousand knives piercing into her, pain so intense and unthinkable and awful that she doesn't know what to call it.

_You were always mine._

* * *

><p>He thinks, perhaps, that this is some kind of cosmic penance. For Gallifrey, for Adric, for Aberdeen-instead-of-Croyden, for what he did to Ace. The universe has finally responded. There's only so much you can do before it does.<p>

He stares at the shirt hanging over the console railing. She hadn't liked it, he remembers, not since he'd landed them in a swamp. She had been going to throw it away after they'd visited her mother.

It's mocking him. Look, it says. She's gone, but look what she's left behind- an endless series of bitter, malicious reminders. Her presence is everywhere- the mugs in the kitchen, the nail polish spattered on the grating, the shoes in the library. He could spend lifetimes destroying what's left of her, and she would still be here.

His knuckles are raw. He'd driven them into the wall unthinkingly, vainly imagining he could destroy plaster and concrete, and she would be waiting for him on the other side. In his head, she still is- hair in loose waves, cocked head, a faint, tongue-touched smile.

"Took you a while," she would say, and he would grip her so tightly that his fingers would be inked into her skin.

He closes his eyes. She would laugh, and then cry, arms locked around his neck, mouth touching his shoulder. He can almost feel the weight of her against him, almost see the tiny freckles on her nose, the clumped spider-lashes of mascara, the barely-chipped tooth. Beautiful- she's so beautiful. He never even kissed her, he never even-

When he opens his eyes, he is alone.

* * *

><p>"Hullo," the girl says, suddenly.<p>

Amy blinks slowly, gripping her mug tighter. "Hello...?" she tries. It takes a lot to throw Amelia Pond off her balance- time travelling will have that sort of effect- but she admits, having a person appear abruptly in front of the kettle is mildly off-putting.

The girl is blonde, the sort of yellow that only comes from the inside of a bottle. She is also wearing nothing but a pair of bright purple knickers with 'Monday' splayed across them, and a baggy shirt advertising the 245th Venusian tour of Les Miserables. Her skin is pale, her eyes wide and brown.

Amy swallows. "How..." she begins, then shakes her head. "Who are you, exactly?"

The girl shrugs. "Nobody." She bites her thumbnail, and Amy notices the streaks of crimson on her knuckles. "I used to be, though. Someone, I mean. But I don't really remember."

Amy is decidedly unnerved. "Don't you have a name?"

"No." The girl laughs and it's the worst sound Amy has heard- a bitter, breaking laughter, shaking in the blonde's pink mouth. "Dead people don't have names. I know that, whoever I am. I'm dead."

Amy is struck by a bolt of horror. There is something in that girl's eyes that shouldn't be there, a strange, disturbing emptiness. She backs away, into the kitchen cupboards, fumbling awkwardly for the cutlery drawer, trying to grab a knife, a fork, anything.

"I can't be here long," the girl says. "It doesn't like looking for me."

"Who?" Amy's voice is barely audible. The air seems to chill, pricking at her skin.

"She helps me to run away, sometimes," the girl continues, staring at Amy somewhat intently. "The...TARDIS. Yeah, that's it, isn't it? The TARDIS. She helps me, but it always finds me again."

Amy has no idea what to do. Rory's name rises on her tongue- strange, isn't it, that it's Rory- but she bites it down. "I," she starts, edging forward, "I should go."

"_No_," the girl cries, lunging towards Amy. "You can't. Not yet. I..." Her forehead creases in frustration. "I had to tell you something."

"What?"

"I don't know. I don't _know_." She seems scared, seems unbalanced. "And you were s'posed to tell him. That man, the one with the bow tie."

"The Doctor," Amy says.

"Yes." The girl rocks back. "Doctor. The Doctor. I know him. But I don't, not really. I knew him, maybe. I can't remember." She seems agitated.

"What did I have to tell him?" Amy asks carefully.

The girl inhales sharply. Her eyes, a deep brown, spark into an eerie, luminous gold. "It wasn't death. It was worse." There is another, rasping voice behind the girl's Cockney one.

The girl's shape seems to flare, to shine, glimmering like she's translucent. And before Amy can do anything- scream, run- the girl is gone. Nothing remains, just the calm and untroubled air.

The mug slips from Amy's fingers and shatters on the tile floor, a million shards splintering away until there's no hope of salvation.

* * *

><p>It had been a sort of lovely accident, a wonderful mistake. Instead of the industrial depths of metropolitan London, he had landed them on the forest planet of Adrenia, in the heights of their springtime festival.<p>

And instead of Rose in jeans and sneakers, he gets her bare arms, gets to see her dance herself right into the dirt, skirts flying. The music is raucous and infectious, the bonfire crackling, roaring at the star-scattered sky. Rose is barefoot, like the natives, pink and blue blossoms braided into the thick blonde strands of her hair. She looks...

She looks like she belongs. And if the wispy hem of her skirt brushes just slightly too far up her thigh, if he looks at the sheen of sweat and pollen splayed across her skin a little too long, well, then, the wine is strong and the night is heady. And just bare days ago, she was lost to him, after all, aiming a gun at the Devil's head.

His girl. His lovely, reckless, mad girl- made of starlight and bravery and time. Who else would have broken open the universe to save him?

Rose dances and the flames roar on.

* * *

><p>The pain isn't regular. She thinks that whatever is doing this to her wants it to be just as terrifying and shocking and awful each time. It hits her without any warning, and if she could scream in this ever present dark, she would.<p>

But she can't. Her body, she can't even feel it anymore, like it's paralyzed. All she has is her mind, her thoughts, and those are unbearably glassy and unclear. She has lost herself- her name, her history, every scrap of anything she ever was. All she can remember is this. And maybe that's the worst thing of all- not even knowing who she was. Is.

Still, sometimes there are images in her head- swirling bites of sound and colour and touch. Faces, and buildings, the brush of fabric, the brittle heat of a teacup. A soft breath, easing in and out of her lungs.

There's a man, a man holding starlight in his palms, with cracked and broken eyes. He is smiling, a thin mask stretched over his face. She thinks she might know him. A girl, too, with flaming hair and a quick smile, her long legs pounding endless corridors.

She remembers blue, a vivid, aching shade that crawled under her skin. The alien whirr of impossible machinery, a blue-gold light glowing, imprinted on her eyelids. TARDIS. She thinks that might be it. The word rolls in her head, syllables deliberate. TARDIS.

She remembers another girl- yellow and gold and luminous. Light pours from her mouth, time streams from her fingertips, and the memory causes a low aching, a growl, to begin in her mind.

She remembers falling, the quicksilver fear, the hollow emptiness when she realized nobody was going to catch her.

But that's the truth, isn't it? Nobody will rescue you- nobody will save you because you cannot _be_ saved. Life is not a fairytale; there are no handsome princes or fairy godmothers to wish away the suffering. Cinderella must sweep up her ashes quietly, Briar Rose can't wait for a kiss to wake her. The princess must climb down from her ivory tower and slay the dragon herself, its blood splattered over her pretty white hands.

The girl must kill the wolf.

_i create myself_

The words flow into her mind. They remind her of something, something just barely out of her reach. A feeling, maybe, a rush of power. Heady and consuming.

_i can see-_

_Hello, little thing._

The monster is back again. And when the pain comes, she can hold just the barest sliver of a thought, a demand. It thrums and beats inside of her, growing louder and louder, ever more insistent.

_take me home_


End file.
